Middle East

One recent poll of young people in the Middle East and North Africa found that more of them saw Russia as a close partner than was the United States of America. The fruits of American intervention? We are told ISIS is not dead but alive in the hearts of tens of thousands of Muslims, that if we leave Syria and Afghanistan our enemies will take over and our friends will be massacred, and that if we stop helping Saudis and Emiratis kill Houthis in Yemen, Iran will notch a victory. In his decision to leave Syria and withdraw half of the 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, Trump enraged our foreign policy elites, though millions of Americans cannot get out of there soon enough.

Washington’s overall objective should be to bring peace to America, not micro-manage other nations’ conflicts. Washington policymakers come up with long lists of objectives which are not worth the cost, in this case essentially permanent war. Withdrawal from Syria is long overdue.

Normally, liberals would cut a non-interventionist president some slack on a dubiously obtained Vietnam-era medical deferment. Not Trump. His withdrawal of troops from unwinnable conflicts and his overtures to enemies leave liberals decidedly unimpressed. Suddenly, they have turned hawkish — they now favor a perpetual presence in the Middle East — and forbid dialogue with dictators. Earlier this year they told us with great confidence that Trump’s irenic North Korean policy would empower Chairman Kim and loose him upon the world. Never mind that the North Korean crisis has disappeared from discussion for months. Where did it go?

A congressional commission found America is weak, isolated, beleaguered, and endangered. Military spending must be greatly increased or Washington will lose its ability to run the world. In which case a new Dark Age may envelop the earth.

The Trump administration appears to share the belief of prior administrations that it can transform the Middle East in America’s image. But Washington’s record in the Middle East is catastrophic. It is time to bring home America’s troops.

The U.S. is at war in Yemen. Special Forces are on the ground in Saudi Arabia, while Washington is providing Riyadh’s military with munitions, targeting assistance, and aerial refueling. All to bomb a nation whose people have done nothing against Americans.

Washington’s relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is embarrassing, counterproductive, and unnecessary. The Kingdom is as much foe as friend of American principles and interests. The U.S. should tell the Saudis that in the future it will deal with the Kingdom when convenient, without any pretense of friendship.

The greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants, many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million, composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth. Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation and one people?

January 12 is just over a week from today, but that’s plenty of time for the President to make a major policy statement in support of the Iranian people, and to put in motion the actions necessary to support them in their desire to rid themselves of the corrupt mullahs now stifling their liberty – and threatening our own national security.

Taking NATO membership off the table would remove Moscow’s incentive to keep the Ukrainian conflict alive. Ukraine could develop economically and politically as it wished. Sanctions could end, encouraging economic integration from Europe through Ukraine onto Russia.

If President Trump is serious about countering Iranian aggression and repairing the mess in the Middle East left by Obama and Bush, then steps must be taken across the region, otherwise Iran will assert political and economic dominance over the entire northern tier of the Middle East and become the Middle East’s Shi’ite superpower.

Whether the growing anti-Iran coalition in the Middle East will solidify into a real counterweight to a potentially nuclear armed Iran remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: The battle with Israel and Saudi Arabia on one side and Iran on the other is heating up.

Why is the containment of China in Asia the responsibility of a United States 12 time zones away? For while China seeks to dominate Eurasia, she appears to have no desire to threaten the vital interests of the United States. China’s Communism appears to be an ideology disbelieved by her own people, that she does not intend to impose it on Asia or the world. Again, are we Americans up for a Second Cold War, and, if so, why?

A country is not just defined by its economic and military strength, its global clout or its powerful allies. It is also judged on how it treats weaker but humane nations. As long as the U.S. remains good to these impressive but vulnerable states, it will remain great as well.

Overall, Trump's Middle East policy has been a success, in striking contrast to his predecessors. The supposed Middle East mavens among the preening NeverTrumpers (Max Boot, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Bill Kristol et. al) made a mess of things, and Trump has gone a long way to cleaning it up. That's not bad for one year in office.

A renewed Middle East war is likely to be something much worse than a second round of the 2006 attempt to rocket Israel into concessions and to kill as many Jews as it can before Islamic jihadists run to Russia, the U.N., and the EU to cajole or force Israel to stop. We are awfully tired of the Middle East, but it is not quite tired of us.

Where are the gains for religious freedom and human rights to justify all the bombings, invasions and wars we have conducted in the lands from Libya to Pakistan—to justify the losses we have endured and the death and suffering we have inflicted? Truth be told, it is in part because of us that Christianity is on its way to being exterminated in its cradle.

U.S. officials have never felt comfortable confronting the crime of religious persecution. They have few answers to offer other than pressing unwilling governments to better protect politically unpopular minorities.

Kuwait is one of the freest nations in the Persian Gulf, as well as one of America’s best friends. Yet its “liberalish” governance, as one Kuwaiti colleague described it, ironically impedes the adoption of market-oriented economic reforms necessary for the country’s prosperity.

To find senior defense and national security officials who share his views, President-elect Trump may have to look beyond the obvious choices who, though undoubtedly talented, have a long association with the failed policies he has promised to rethink.